Political Satire and Public Disillusionment in Nepali Vehicle Discourse

Abstract

This paper examines political satire and the public's disillusionment with politics in Nepal through the analysis of vehicle discourses written and displayed on public vehicles and how power relations and resistance are negotiated. Based on Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), and supplemented by satire theory, and Foucault's concept of power and resistance, the study examines how vehicle discourses act as a medium of political commentary and social critique. Fifteen vehicle discourses were photographed during field travel in Gandaki, Bagmati and Lumbini provinces between January and May 2026, and only eight vehicle texts were purposively selected for analysis based on their relevance to the theme of the study and political significance. The inscriptions, which were written in Nepali, were first translated into English and then analyzed for rhetorical and discursive features, including irony, metaphor, parody, contrast, and parallelism. The study revealed four major themes: political betrayal and loss of trust, elite hypocrisy and political privilege, economic inequality and migration, and civic frustration as a form of symbolic resistance. The research also suggests that vehicle texts act as an alternative public sphere where common people vent their disillusionment towards the government and hold the dominant political narratives to be false. The study enhances academic understanding by demonstrating how vehicle discourse serves as an everyday, mobile space in which Nepali individuals utilize satire to challenge prevailing political narratives and express public dissatisfaction.